A Shred of Honour (19 page)

Markham was too much of a gentleman to miss the allusion. ‘Then might I have the honour of this dance?’

Her hands went to her ample bosom with theatrical surprise ‘Me, Lieutenant Markham?’

‘It would be a pleasure,’ he replied, since there was nothing else he could say.

The reaction, when he took to the floor, was intriguing.
The Picards nodded approvingly, but Rossignol was frowning. Eveline gave him a look that was at once
friendly
and understanding. But Lizzie Gordon, dancing with Augustus Hanger, responded differently. Not sure if he’d seen correctly, he looked hard, ignoring her partner’s glare, when the dance took Pascalle close to the
primrose-clad
English beauty. The twin lines that appeared above her nose, the same as he had seen the first day they’d met, clearly indicated equal disapproval. Was she, he wondered, questioning why a man like him should be partnering a lady like Pascalle when he could have been dancing with her?

Pascalle prattled on endlessly, seeming quite deliriously happy to be in the arms of such a handsome officer. Markham thought her a little silly, but nevertheless put all his effort in to covering up her inability to dance. His liking for women extended even to scatterbrained ones, and he could not bring himself to do other than his best. The fatality of such an approach was brought home to him as soon as they stopped. Pascalle, ample chest
heaving
, brought forth her card and signed him up for several more dances.

He partnered Eveline on his next outing, welcoming the admiration that was directed at her, the way that she swayed revealingly inside her loose dress. And the degree of intimacy they enjoyed as the steps brought them into close proximity was even harder to disguise than her beauty, manifesting itself in dozens of different discreet gestures and smiles. Miss Gordon found this even harder to bear, and hardly took her eyes off the couple, much to the chagrin of Midshipman Driberg, busily boasting to her. The poetic justice of that made Markham perform at his very best.

Yet he wasn’t solely concentrating on Eveline. Lizzie Gordon had appeared to him an almost unassailable
target
for seduction. Being English, and from the stratum of society in which she moved, he reckoned that nothing
short of a miracle would be required to get her into bed. But her behaviour tonight, reacting first to Pascalle and now Eveline, denoted a degree of jealousy that hinted at a different character from the one he had supposed. The sirens, which should have been ringing in his head,
warning
him of the danger he was courting were, as usual, drowned out by the thrill of the chase. Elphinstone’s niece was a stuck-up prig with no notion of what pleasure she could have. Nothing, not even Eveline’s presence, could stop him from imagining what it would be like to change that.

He danced with Pascalle again to add to her
annoyance
, before making his way across the floor. The stony face cheered him immensely, being so much more encouraging than indifference.

‘Miss Gordon, I have belatedly come to claim my dance.’

‘Have you, sir,’ she snapped.

‘And the crowning prize of the evening, of course.’

The smile on his face clearly infuriated her. The way she snapped her fan shut had several heads turning in their direction. If Markham had cared to look, he would have noticed that two of them belonged to Elphinstone and Hanger. But he had eyes only for her when she held out her hand. As he led her on to the floor, she spoke, seeking by a change of subject to deflect his unnerving attentions by putting him in his place.

‘This must seem uncommon dull after London.’

‘Sure, at this very moment, it is anything but.’

‘Oh come, Lieutenant. The attractions of the
metropolis
are obvious. Gaming clubs and the like. I believe you moved in rather raffish circles, that Mr Sheridan was a friend.’

‘An acquaintance would be a more accurate
description
, though he did secure me a box at Drury Lane once or twice.’

‘You are fond of amateur theatricals, I hear.’

That was a very revealing remark, one that
demonstrated
just how much Elphinstone had imparted. One of his father’s friends in America had been Clinton’s
Adjutant
General, Major André. A great lover of spectacle, he’d roped in young George Markham to play several, mostly juvenile, parts in the plays he put on for the
garrisons
. In one production of
Hamlet
, the naval officer playing Laertes was too drunk to perform. Thrown on into a strange part, Markham had been given a deep cut above the eye by the lead actor in the fight scene,
something
obviously witnessed by Lizzie’s uncle.

Not that the accident dimmed young George’s pleasure in performance. But it was ended when, one night in Philadelphia, André had cast him as a girl, a young beauty in some danger of seduction. Markham had enjoyed himself hugely. But such a performance, given the dubious inclinations of his son and heir Freddy, had nearly brought on an apoplexy in General John Markham. It would have ended anyway. André, having secured the betrayal of Benedict Arnold, was caught on his way back from West Point, and hanged by the Americans as a spy. Nevertheless the theatre was a bug which, bitten by once, was hard to shake.

‘I had the privilege of seeing some fine acting,’ he replied. ‘Certainly Siddons and her brother, Kemble, were very fine, though I thought the child actor Master Betty somewhat overblown. Calling him Young Roscius is too flattering.’

‘I saw Sarah Siddons perform in Bath.’

‘How lucky you are.’

‘Do you really think so? I am given to understand that she’s rather a low creature.’

The smile never left his face, but the tone of his voice was hard. ‘Then I can only suppose, Miss Gordon, that you sat in the Theatre Royal with your eyes shut and your ears closed.’

The sharp intake of breath caused her to hiss. ‘I take it you admire her, sir.’

‘I do. Both as an actress and as a friend.’

That was gilding it a bit. He did know Sarah Siddons, having pursued her eldest daughter for several weeks, not truly intimately enough to term her a friend. However, it had the desired effect on Lizzie Gordon, forcing her into an abrupt change of tack.

‘There is a rumour that a Bourbon prince is on his way from Aachen. Imagine, the Dauphin here.’

Troubridge had said the same thing. Artois and Provence, the late King’s brothers, had led the flight of the nobles after the fall of the Bastille, an act which had done little to help their eldest brother. Artois hungered after the crown, but couldn’t claim it since no-one knew the fate of the heir.

‘King Louis is dead, and who knows what has
happened
to his poor son. Whoever comes to Provence, it is unlikely to be the Dauphin. And given their past behaviour, I doubt if the late King’s brothers will put themselves in any place where they perceive themselves to be in danger.’

Her lips pursed. ‘I think you malign them.’

‘Would that you were right,’ he replied with deep irony.

The orchestra started playing, and the first dancers began to move. ‘But it would be natural for Provence, at least, to come here. These are his own domains, the one place where the Revolution has been defeated.’

‘Hardly defeated, Miss Gordon.’

‘Deflected then,’ she snapped, her hand waving
imperiously
. The evident passion made her look so much more beautiful than her pose of English reserve. ‘Stopped, avoided, deferred.’

‘Please, Miss Gordon, my poor Irish wits don’t run to such a lesson in wordplay.’

‘I dislike your condescension as much as I disapprove
of your being obtuse. You behave as if any notion, in a female head, must be mere fancy.’

He bowed slightly. ‘Then I must make amends with my feet, for the mistakes from my mouth.’

‘Imagine if they were both to come here.’

‘Neither of Louis’ brothers will stir from their retreats, I’d take money on it. Even if they were titled King of France.’

There was a twinkle in her eye as she began to move, a look that hinted at secret knowledge. And added to that was just a touch of triumph. ‘Don’t be too sure about that, Mister Clever Dick Markham!’

His attempt to ask her what she meant was interrupted by the commotion at the door. An ensign, covered in dust and clearly out of breath, was scanning the room. As soon as he saw Elphinstone he ran towards him, pushing the dancers out of the way. Since the Captain had moved closer to the dancing couple, so as to keep his eye on Markham, they were able to hear the message very clearly.

‘The Dons, sir. They launched an attack on the batteries opposite the Fort de Malbousquet.’

‘Damn Spaniards,’ growled Elphinstone, ignoring the fact that many were still present. Markham was vaguely aware of Hood and his party pushing through the crowd as the ensign continued.

‘They’ve been thrown back, Captain, with heavy losses. Some of them are abandoning the defences, and taking the Neapolitans with them. If the French take advantage of their reserve, the whole line will crumble.’

Elphinstone’s voice rose, as Hanger took station by his side. He first commanded the band to cease playing, then every officer to return to his post. His eyes swung round to Markham, still holding his niece’s hand.

‘Markham,’ he demanded, ‘what’s your strength?’

‘A mere two dozen, sir.’

‘But not occupied in the line?’

‘No.’

Hanger cut in. ‘I suggest they be sent anyway, if only to give a semblance of resistance.’

Elphinstone was looking at his niece when he nodded.

‘Get your men up to Malbousquet at the double,’ Hanger ordered. ‘Hold the trenches before the sally port until the Spaniards can get you some reinforcements.’

‘Sir.’

‘And Lieutenant,’ added Elphinstone, ‘this is an
emergency
. You cannot fall back. You’re to die there, this time, if necessary. No more of your damned retreats.’

The only thing that made the insult bearable was the way his niece swooned.

It was cold, and before an hour had passed the rain began to fall. A light drizzle that seemed to work its way through the necks of the rankers’ oilskin capes, it produced muted moans and curses even though Markham had ordered complete silence. The poorly constructed trenches close to the river bed, so recently occupied by Spaniards, stank, with all the filth that an army could produce beginning to float around their boots. Markham spent more time
looking
back towards Toulon, still lit up like an invasion beacon, than at the enemy. If they wanted to come, then he had neither the force to disrupt their preparations, nor the men to stop them. And there was certainly insufficient flow in the river to do more than wet their feet.

He was more concerned that the promised
reinforcements
hadn’t arrived. Out in no man’s land, scavengers were picking over the bodies of those soldiers who’d died there, as well as the wounded. The cries for some form of succour, which had filled the night air when they arrived, tended to be short-lived. Those who desecrated soldiers’ bodies were not the type to balk at dispatching to
perdition
someone whose property they desired.

‘We have got to get the men out of these trenches, sir,’ said Rannoch, as soon as the rain stopped. ‘The air is mortal with all this filth. And the rain will only make it worse. Half of them will be down with a bloody flux in a matter of days.’

‘We can’t, Sergeant. As soon as we put our heads above the parapet they’ll be silhouetted against the lights from the town.’

‘They should have been doused ages past.’

‘Someone forgot,’ Markham replied bitterly. ‘Just like they seem to have forgotten that we are here in the first place.’

‘Then let us go back to the rear. It is not going to make much difference, two dozen men. If those French devils come, we will have to run.’

‘I have strict orders to die here, if necessary.’

Rannoch’s harsh reply was a complete throwback to his behaviour when they’d first come ashore. ‘Then I hope you have got the sense to tilt a deaf ear to such nonsense.’

‘Pull the men back through the supply trench and get them above ground between here and the redoubt. I’ll keep watch.’

‘Sir,’ the sergeant replied, after a loud exhalation of breath. Markham wondered what he’d have said to him if he hadn’t agreed, indeed was almost tempted to ask. But he was gone, slipping along the line, whispering to each man in turn, urging them down off the firestep, with orders to follow him. The slightest noise earned the
perpetrator
a hissed curse. Soon Markham was alone, in the Stygian darkness, wrapped in his heavy blue cloak with only his thoughts as company, thoughts which centred on how he’d come to end up here in the first place.

His silent profanities against the Spaniards were partly due to the situation, but more to do with Lizzie Gordon. The opportunities to tumble someone like her would come rarely, if ever, outside a marriage bed. But he’d had her in retreat, mentally conceding an interest in him, manifested in her obvious jealousy, that made anything possible. She knew she was a beauty, and resented the idea of some other woman taking precedence over her in any man’s eyes. And in his experience, that lever of envy was often enough to make even the most chaste creature reckless.

Such thoughts were no good for a man in his position,
stuck in a badly constructed trench reeking with the putrid odour of human filth. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. In America and Russia, apart from a brief period before the surrender at Yorktown, he’d fought wars of movement, in the former country hemmed in by a dense landscape, in the latter over the vast expanses of open steppe. Darkness itself held no terrors, but the feeling of being constricted did.

A slight scuffing sound brought his mind back to the present. He peered forward, trying to discern some shape in the unrelieved blackness of the night. With a vivid imagination, it was all to easy to conjure up outlines and profiles that dissolved as soon as he seemed to have them fixed. But another sound, of something hard like metal knocking on wood, had every nerve in his body stretched taut. The French might have sent a party forward to see if the trench was still occupied. That in itself was scarifying enough. But worse was the notion that it might be the scavengers. Somehow the idea that he’d have his throat cut by one of that breed made his flesh crawl. They’d strip him of everything, perhaps even mutilate his body, and leave him naked to be found by his men at first light.

His hand, holding the pistol under his cloak, was clammy with sweat. The rain began to fall again, light, thin stuff that blew into his eyes. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up, adding to the feeling that someone was close to him. In his imagination he could hear them breathing, even the pounding of an adjacent heart, until he realised it was his own.

Suddenly, the French sent up a flare, and there right in front of his eyes, silhouetted against the stark blue light, was the unmistakable shape, wrapped in some kind of scarf, of a human head. The figure rose swiftly, an arm coming aloft with the outline of a vicious-looking blade catching his eye. He struggled to pull out his pistol,
consciou
s
that it was caught in the folds of his heavy, damp cloak. Aware that he was too slow, he set himself to jump
backwards as the thin flash of steel flashed by his head, and took the crouching figure in the chest.

He could hear Rannoch cursing in his ear, twisting his bayonet in his victim’s guts as his pistol came free. Another figure rose to his left, beyond the sergeant’s arm, black against the blue-lit sky, raising a club with which to smash out his sergeant’s brains. The flash of Markham’s pistol showed the face, swarthy, snarling and, though as ugly as sin, quite definitely female. She jerked back as his bullet took her in the head, and her screams were added to those of Rannoch’s prey, sounds that died away as both expired.

‘They were women,’ Markham gasped.

‘And poor souls they will be, too. The kind of men they bide with will be the sort to send them out to do the dirty work, then drink the proceeds when they get home.’

‘Thank you, Rannoch,’ he whispered, adding after a slight pause, ‘that’s not the first time I should have said that.’

‘We cannot have you getting killed, Lieutenant Markham. We might get a real Marine officer in your place. Then we would be totally in the shit, instead of just up to our ankles.’

In the dark, it was hard to work out Rannoch’s exact meaning. The irony in his tone was easy to detect. But the words, even then, had the capacity to diminish, even wound him.

‘Have I just been complimented or damned?’ he asked.

‘You are alive, are you not?’

‘D’you think more of these wretches will try to take us?’

They might at that. The riverbed in front provides a place for them to hide, and we have got no blue lights to send aloft. When I saw the Frenchmen put one up I expected to hear the sound of a charge.’

‘That wasn’t put up for an attack. More likely the
scavengers are near their trenches as well. I suppose they tried the same thing on Johnny Crapaud.’

‘They are not the kind to care whose body they strip, that is for certain.’

Markham didn’t want to think about that. ‘Was there any sign of help on the way?’

‘None that I could see.’

‘It’d be best if we were back to back. That way we will reduce the chance of getting skewered.’

Rannoch complied, the broad shoulders in his oilskin cape providing more security to Markham than he did to the Highlander. He thought about reloading his pistol, but that would require some form of light, which would be certain to attract the attention of anyone still grubbing about in no man’s land. The rain had stopped again, and overhead he could see that the cloud cover had broken, which produced a modicum of starlight and allowed them a few feet of vision. It also dropped the temperature quite drastically, and he shivered inside his cloak.

‘We’re in for a long night, Sergeant,’ Markham whispered.

‘And a cold one,’ Rannoch murmured in reply.

The risk of one, or even both of them, falling asleep, was acute, so the conversation which followed, carried on in an undertone, was an aid to staying awake. It wasn’t long before Markham understood how little they had to talk about. The subject of improving shooting was soon exhausted, and he didn’t really wish to inquire as to the man’s opinion about his qualities as an officer. Nor was the sergeant the type to respond to personal questions, even of the most vague nature, which threw Markham back upon his own history.

‘What do you and the men know of me?’ he whispered suddenly. ‘Of my past?’ Rannoch stiffened, hesitating, clearly aware that reply with a negative would fly in the face of all logic. ‘You may speak the truth, Sergeant.’

‘I know about what happened at the Battle of
Guilford,’ Rannoch said slowly, his voice deeper than normal. ‘Or, at least what was said to have happened.’

‘I was fifteen at the time,’ Markham said suddenly, aware that he was speaking of things he never disclosed. ‘We’d tried to assault the courthouse three times. The regiment was in tatters, casualties screaming for help. And they were looking to me, the only officer still standing, for guidance.’

He couldn’t bring himself to explain that he hadn’t run away, but had left his post because he’d been told what the British Legion were up to in Salisbury, a hamlet where he’d been billeted for a week before the battle. In terms of atrocities, the British army in America was bad enough. But when it came to rapine, the cavalry of Tarleton’s British Legion were in a different class. There wasn’t even a semblance of restraint on their behaviour, with their commander positively encouraging them to rape, murder and burn.

‘I stayed, for a week before the battle, with a family in Salisbury.’

‘And that is why you left the regiment?’

‘I thought we’d be rested. It never occurred to me that Cornwallis would ask us to go back into the battle. If I had, I would have stayed, regardless of my feelings.’

Rannoch’s voice was suddenly even softer than his previous whispering. ‘A girl, then?’

The quiet laugh that preceded Markham’s positive reply had more despair in it than humour. ‘Flora Imrie.’

‘The same age?’

‘Older by a year. I found out she’d been raped
repeatedly
before being thrown, to join the rest of her family, into the flames of her own burning house. The soldiers of the British Legion boasted to me of what they’d done — watched, encouraged, by one of their officers, Lieutenant Augustus Hanger.’

‘Christ,’ said Rannoch.

‘He was so drunk he could barely stand upright. Laughed in my face when I demanded they be punished.’

‘That scar on his face,’ Rannoch prompted, which led Markham to believe he might know more than he was saying.

‘I paid for that. There was no one to stop him taking revenge.’

‘I wonder you are still alive.’

‘The surgeons of the British Legion were bigger
drunkards
than the men. They didn’t sew up his face very well. But I reckon I only survived because they gave him rum to dull the pain.’

‘They won at Guilford without you.’

‘Yes, Sergeant. But the cost was so high we had to retreat to Williamsburg. The thing I remember most is the carts full of wounded men, none of them receiving any attention. We were passing through a land inhabited by the same people as us. They spoke the same language, had the same customs, some must even have been related. But they shot at us. And after Salisbury and a hundred places like it, who can blame them?’

‘Kin against kin usually turns out to be the worst.’

‘You sound as if you know. Did you serve in America?’

‘I did. In the Twenty-ninth Foot.’

Markham nearly blurted out ‘Where?’, but stopped himself just in time. That regiment had been in America for decades, fighting throughout the Seven Years War with little distinction, so ill-disciplined that they were damned by General Wolfe before, during, and after his Quebec campaign. Responsible for the Boston massacre of 1774, in which half a dozen protesters had been shot down, the 29th Foot were credited with igniting the spark that started the whole bloody conflict that became the American Revolution. Some of the men who had fired that day had been convicted of manslaughter, which resulted in their being branded with the letter ‘M’ on the thumb.

‘Then you would have come home with as much credit as me.’

Rannoch snorted, angrily. ‘Rankers do not get credit. They get half-starved, beaten and robbed of their pay. They are lined up by men who are rich and stupid, and ordered forward in line so that they can be killed. When their lords and masters err, it is the bloody soldiers who pay. And when those poor souls return to their homes, they find the land they grew up on taken away.’

‘Why are you in the army, Rannoch?’

The ripple of anger was discernible through the man’s back, a feeling so intense that he was actually trembling, and Markham thought he heard something that was like a cross between a snarl and a sob. Rannoch too was being forced to remember, and perhaps experiencing a pain similar to that Markham had suffered when he realised that Flora Imrie, the first love of his youth, was dead.

‘Half starvation is a muckle better than the thing whole. I come from a place where keeping a sheep alive is more important than the life of a man, woman or child. I know, because when I have had to bury them, I was barred from using land that was fit for grazing.’

‘I was no more glad than you to get home,’ Markham murmured quickly.

Rannoch merely grunted, clearly unwilling to be any more open. So Markham kept talking, aware as he
painted
the balanced picture of the intervening years just how much he was leaving out. His mind was working on two levels, one recalling the truth and the other filleting it into a cheerful story. Not that he lied exactly, just that he indulged, as all people do, in the right to keep some things hidden. Thus his love of the bottle, after his return from America, was recounted as manly and amusing instead of destructive; the failures of his various ventures blamed on circumstance instead of stupidity.